How to measure learning. New America Foundation’s Amy Laitinen writes about the “curious birth and harmful legacy of the credit hour.” Education Sector earlier co-released a paper with Laitinen that outlines the problems of measuring learning based on credits, or seat time, and instead encourages a higher education system that measures learning based on competencies. (The Chronicle of Higher EdContinue Reading »

Recently we released Cracking the Credit Hour, Amy Laitinen’s look at how higher education’s reliance on the credit hour is inhibiting innovation. Even since the report was released, there are new developments, including a new proposal by the University of Southern New Hampshire to offer a competency-based associate’s degree.

Join Amy next week for a Twitter chat on theContinue Reading »

Our entire massive multibillion-dollar federal financial aid system runs on credit hours. Credit hours are used to determine a student’s full- or part-time status, which changes the amount of aid an individual can receive. But as we note in our report Cracking the Credit Hour, credit hours simply measure time, not learning. Despite the trillions of dollars spent by students and taxpayers on higContinue Reading »

While policymakers of all stripes are waking up to the college completion crisis, very little attention has been paid to the college quality crisis (that we have one, why we have one, or what we can do about it). Last week I wrote about the release of our new report, Cracking the Credit Hour, which reveals the credit hour’s curious origins and the fact that credit hours were never meant to measContinue Reading »

Remember when you got your driver’s license? Remember parallel parking for the licensing instructor? How did you learn how to do that? Some of us learned from Dad; others through drivers’ education courses; and a few lucky ones absorbed it all through manuals. In the end, it didn’t matter which way we learned, as long as we could demonstrate those perfect parking skills on test day.*

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Guest blog post written by Jane Wellman.

The student credit hour  ”system” is the major currency of higher education.  It is a Mobius strip of a measure:  turned one way, it measures academic credits.  Turned another, it’s a measure of resource use, faculty workload, staffing, enrollments, and pretty much everything else.  It is loosely regulated by accrediting agencieContinue Reading »

As anyone who has ever attended college probably realizes, the currency of degrees and credentials are credit hours.  But few people know where the credit hour comes from. Today the New America Foundation and Education Sector have released Cracking the Credit Hour, a report that covers the credit hour’s history from the days of Andrew Carnegie to the latest “credit hour” regulation. This new poContinue Reading »